Lloyds stops accepting The Money Centre cases

16 December 2009 | By Natalie Thomas

Lloyds Banking Group has stopped accepting mortgage applications from The Money Centre.

The Money Centre has put all its staff at risk of redundancy as a result of the decision.

Mark Alexander, managing director at The Money Centre, has not revealed the reasoning behind the decision.

But he says: “I can confirm that the Lloyds brands are no longer accepting applications from The Money Centre.

“We are extremely disappointed that after introducing £866,202,903 of completed buy-to-let mortgage business to the Lloyds brands over the last five years that such a decision can be made without any form of reasonable explanation.”

He adds: “This decision will have a detrimental effect on the company and has consequently forced us to put all staff at risk of redundancy due to the predicted loss of income.

“All cases already submitted to Lloyds by The Money Centre are being dealt with as normal to minimise any disruption to our clients.”

In October 2008 HBOS suspended The Money Centre from placing business with it for three weeks following irregularities in some of its applications.

A spokeswoman for Lloyds Banking Group says it cannot say why it has stopped accepting cases, but says: “We can confirm that we’re no longer accepting new business from the Money Centre.”

Readers' comments (33)

Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 11:49 am
Lloyds did that with my company in March which consequently meant our network terminated our agreement. Have not been able to find another network since and have lost business as well as nearly losing home due to no income. No explanation given apart from irregularities from cases a year prior.
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 12:05 pm
How Lloyds can be allowed to act in such a dictatorial fashion is just astonishing. Guilty until proven innocent - except there is no right to a fair trial!
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 12:11 pm
Same happened to my company. 32c Mortgages cancelled withour reason, and still not prepared to awswer questions.Told not to bother appealing as it would not be heard. Some individuals in the Lloyds Ivory towers obviously descendants from the Gestapo
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Mark Ericsson | 16 Dec 2009 12:14 pm
The decisions, particularly by the leading brand lenders, to terminate mortgage business introductions are becoming as commonplace as they are mystifying. The apparent reluctance by the lender to cite specific reasons for such decisions to the intermediary, is unhelpful. Vague, unspecific, general reasons such as "following a review of the quality of business submitted by your Firm.....etc etc." is very frustrating for intermediaries, since it's tantamount to saying "We've got a secret, you've got to guess what it is".

For directly authorised intermediary Firms, it's particularly difficult. They have no way of knowing what they're accused of, so no effective right to appeal against the decision.

One is bound to wonder what's really behind this increasingly commonplace practice.
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 12:16 pm
I also know of a colleague who received the same treatment from Lloyds Banking Group. A generic letter on photocopied paper told him he was no longer allowed to submit business to Lloyds Group (inc. HBOS, BOS, BM Solutions, IF, C&G etc.) due to 'irregularities' in some of his applications. Consequently he was suspended by his Network. After a full investigation by the Network of all his applications to Lloyds Group, he was fully exonerated and re-instated to the Network. Lloyds refused to change their decision, and even refused to disclose exactly what the irregularities were. Also, the adviser was told that as Lloyds Banking Group owns so many brands now, their mortgage market share (28%) equates to an amount that will not allow you to be classed as independent if you cannot submit to them.
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 12:32 pm
What law applies to this? Particularly given the dominant market position of Lloyds. Does anyone know?
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 12:33 pm
I tell you why it is whats happening. The FSA are going into these Lenders, having a go at them for some of their Lending Decisions and then the Lender to get off the hook blames us poor old Brokers to get themselves off the hook!! Yet who makes the final decision with all their so called high technology that us Brokers dont have access to? Yes you are right the LENDERS so it is they who should be guilty rather than us be blamed.
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 12:41 pm
This guilty until proven innocent attitude that they have means that members of staff at these companies may also find it difficult to get work in the financial industry unless their names are cleared.

How can such a personal attack be permited without evidence to back it up?
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Steve Keenan | 16 Dec 2009 12:53 pm
In the long term most lenders want to restrict distribution to a limited number of closely linked partners. This makes the job of monitoring their distribution chanels more cost effective & allows them to demonstrate to the FSA they have adequate monitoring systems to police the sales process & record keeping. It's a sure fire thing that their closest partners will have the best sales & compliance systems. To survive in this climate systems are everything, but there's not enough money going around to support any significant IT development. If you're a network member & you suffer loss of facilities, then maybe you should be taking a good look at their relationship with the product provider.
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Anonymous | 16 Dec 2009 1:47 pm
It seems that The Money Centre is not the only victim of Lloyds disgraceful actions.

If Lloyds can do this to a broker the size of The Money Centre and get away with it. What does that mean for the rest of us?

It would be interesting to find out how many other firms have recieved similar treatment. Maybe if there are similarities there could be a course of action against Lloyds. I am sure The Money Centre would like to hear about them.
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